Banner and Flag Standardization Pack (now supports M&B v1.011 & Warband v1.105)

[yellowmosquito]

is there any chance that you would make a shield standardization or remap pack?
if it could be done so that instead of it centering the texture on the shield, it centered it on the top half so that the design is central on the shield but on the chest of the surcoat it would be the best mod for M&B IMHO

I thought about this, but so far I have come to the conclusion that doing this with textures would probably not be worth the effort and most likely not the best approach.  Since users can make their own banners, you would never "really" know where the user wanted to center of the shield/heraldry to be. 

This problem could probably best be solved by using the tableau system.  (This is how the banners are drawn onto the shields and heraldry in game.)  Have you looked into adjusting the tableau (with the module system) so that the part of the texture you want in the center displays in the center?

[Urlik]

I cheated (as you can see from my avatar)

I downloaded the varied surcoats pack and changed one to have the device on the chest, then I made a banner with the device positioned to display nicely on shields

not the most subtle of fixes but it works in my game and I'm happy with the results

[Arioste]

First of all: thanks for this great tool, it helped me a lot. I have just one Problem with the alphachannel. When I save the file the surroundings of the banners and flaggs is correct. But ingame and when I reopen the file there are some parts coloured which  should be transparent. I guess it's the format, but I tried all kinds of compression and the problem is still there. Even without any compression  :-/

[yellowmosquito]

First of all: thanks for this great tool, it helped me a lot. I have just one Problem with the alphachannel. When I save the file the surroundings of the banners and flaggs is correct. But ingame and when I reopen the file there are some parts coloured which  should be transparent. I guess it's the format, but I tried all kinds of compression and the problem is still there. Even without any compression  :-/

It is most likely the format you are saving the texture in.

Make sure that you are saving your texture as a DX5 texture with explicit alpha, and make sure that there is no background on the texture (make sure it is transparent).  When you export the texture, make sure that the alpha channel comes with it.

A quick search I did on the forum found this thread which may help you.

[Arioste]

Thanks for your answer. Unfortunatelly I'm using GIMP with the dds plugin. I have four DXT5 formats.  BC3 / DXT5, Alpha Exponent (DXT5), I YCoCg and YCoCg scaled. I tried each of them but everytime the whole data becomes transparent. With any other compression a part of the background stays transparent, but around the images of the banners appear strange spots in "decent" colours like magenta or cyan. (which appear ingame aswell)

[DaBlade]

1: When you use "explicit alpha" you should use DXT3, otherwise you'll get an increased file size with no need for it.

2: The native banners textures don't even use the alpha channel, although I believe this mod uses it.

3: When you use the alpha channel for transparency and you don't need greyscale tones transparency (read half-transparency), you should use DTX3 format, because you get savings regarding file size.

4: I haven't tried this tool yet (although I probably will) and regardless of how I appreciate the effort, any strange artifacts you may get in game will be due to the texture mapping, assuming you're doing everything else right.

Hope this helps

[Arioste]

Thanks again for the answer. Gimp has no option for DXT3 explicit alpha (at least I didn't find it) and DXT3 and DXT5 have the same size - and the same effect  After another round of trying I figured out, that the transparency is correct, it's the borders of the banners which change their color. I don't know wheter its a problem of GIMP or of me. At least I know it's not the texture mapping. I save the files when they look correct, but when I reopen them, there are these strange colors. For the moment I give up and change back to white background and small files. Without compression the files are shown correct, but each of them has 4 MB so it really slows down the game a "little" bit.

[DaBlade]

You get those format options when you're saving the file using the Nvidea plugin. I believe it works with Gimp (although I'm not 100% sure).

[Arioste]

Yes, there are two plugins for gimp which should work like the invidia plugin für ps2. I googled a little bit and finally understood, that my problem is not the alpha channels, but what the compression does to the colors. I think I should use something with less colours bevor converting to compressed dds. I gonna try that. Thanks again for your help.

[doc82nd]

What happens to be the max amount of banners warband can handle?

[GetAssista]

as much as you want on scenes/heraldry
no more than 256 on global map (map icon restriction) - oh wait, that's for MB1.011, dunno about WB yet...

[doc82nd]

So the most I can have is 256 banners for factions to use?

[yellowmosquito]

So the most I can have is 256 banners for factions to use?

I don't know what the limit is.  If the old limit was 256, it is likely that the current limit is too.  Increasing this limit was probably not real high on taleworld's warband priority list.

You can use the models I've provided and point them at different texture sheets as you attempt to find the limit.

Do you really use more than 256? Wow.

[doc82nd]

So the most I can have is 256 banners for factions to use?

I don't know what the limit is.  If the old limit was 256, it is likely that the current limit is too.  Increasing this limit was probably not real high on taleworld's warband priority list.

You can use the models I've provided and point them at different texture sheets as you attempt to find the limit.

Do you really use more than 256? Wow.

No i don't use more than 256... But my mod is going to have around 200 NPCs and I want each of them to have their own flag... So i was just looking to see what limitations there were before I started this task.

[homeworlder]

Nice